FT special crime edition causes some confusion

City workers were greeted with a range of headlines to entertain them on their
commute into work on Friday.

Edited by Jonathan Russell

9:38PM GMT 27 Mar 2009

Tackling head-on the thorny question of whether Barclays will have to raise money from the Government to shore up its balance sheet, the first edition of the Financial Times declared "Fears rise Barclays will need injection" before its second edition came out with the line "Barclays' stress test signals no new funds".

Confused? Not as much as the lucky few who were then handed a spoof version of the pink 'un when they turned up at Canary Wharf. It was getting difficult to identify which was the real FT.

"We live on financial crimes" the paper declares before going on to detail how the world might look in 2020 – carbon rationing, rising sea levels, total breakdown of the markets, that sort of thing. The paper was produced by the people behind some of the protests being organised for next week's G20 meeting, which could very well mean we can expect a re-run of similar stunts.

Do we see the publication of Evading Standards, The San Francisco Chomical and Evening Pest?

A definite bad hair day for City types

More on next week's planned demonstrations. Companies are already giving guidance on areas employees should avoid and what they should wear – I think bowler hats and pinstriped suits are not being encouraged.

Not to be outdone, broker Fairfax has put out a note with its own bit of advice for City clients.

"Demonstrations are planned for the City to coincide with the G20 summit in London next week," the company tells us. "'Financial Fools' plans to focus on the Bank of England and RBS offices on Bishopsgate on 1st April, April fools day."

Worrying stuff. What's the answer? Facial hair, apparently. "We recommend mining executives should adopt the 'hairy geologists in the field' look, this should blend in with demonstrators if contact is inadvertently made."

Law firm is flush with green shoots

It seems it is the season to be spotting those green shoots of recovery. Earlier this week, US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner started talking up the market, then Barclays Capital put out a bullish, well relatively bullish, note about the global economy.

And I spot international law firm Sullivan & Cromwell has also come out with a upbeat statement about how the mergers and acquisitions market may be about to bounce back. "Clearly this is the time to make an acquisition if you are a company that has the cash," the mergers and acquisitions specialist tells us.

Is it just talking up its own book? Well, maybe, and so maybe I shouldn't be giving them the publicity. But it's beyond my powers to resist writing about a law firm with an employee called, and I'm not making this up, Sue Yoo.

Charity gets more than a penny for them

Someone has been looking after the pennies. A charity called Pennies from Heaven has just announced it has topped the £1m mark in donations. Not bad for an organisation that relies on employees rounding down their monthly salaries to the nearest pound and donating the pennies to charity.

The list of organisations taking part in the scheme is impressive, including bookies, banks and local authorities.

No sign of Government departments taking part yet, but I suppose they are too busy dealing with pounds, billions of them, to worry about pennies.